How to setup zsh to append history to a file named dynamically by date

Question

My biggest sticking point moving from bash to zsh is the history configuration. Using oh-my-zsh there is a history.zsh file in #ZSH/lib that I found (I think) can be disabled via unsetopt share_history in .zshrc.

I want to just mimic my bash history setup that uses PROMPT_COMMAND bash env that runs after each interactive action (command entered). I found here that zsh has a hook called precmd that is somewhat similar.

Below is my custom bash history setup that writes history to the ~/.logs directory in files of the current date, i.e. bash-history-2020-10-27.log

    # Saving history to file
    export PROMPT_COMMAND='if [ "$(id -u)" -ne 0 ]; then echo "$(date "+%Y-%m-%d.%H:%M:%S") $(pwd) $(history 1)" >> ~/.logs/bash-history-$(date "+%Y-%m-%d").log; fi'
    
    export HISTSIZE=100000
    export HISTTIMEFORMAT="%d/%m/%y %T  "
    # Avoid duplicates
    export HISTCONTROL=ignoredups:erasedups  
    # When the shell exits, append to the history file instead of overwriting it
    #shopt -s histappend
    
    # After each command, append to the history file and reread it
    export PROMPT_COMMAND="${PROMPT_COMMAND:+$PROMPT_COMMAND$'\n'}history -a; history -c; history -r"

The modified zsh version is shown below. This config lives in the $ZSH_CUSTOM directory.

    # Saving history to file
    setopt INC_APPEND_HISTORY
    setopt EXTENDED_HISTORY
    setopt HIST_FIND_NO_DUPS
    setopt HIST_IGNORE_ALL_DUPS
    unsetopt share_history
    
    export HISTSIZE=1000000000
    export HISTFILESIZE=1000000000
    export HISTTIMEFORMAT="%d/%m/%y %T  "
    
    # Functions
    precmd() { eval 'if [ "$(id -u)" -ne 0 ]; then echo "$(date "+%Y-%m-%d.%H:%M:%S") $(pwd) $(history 1)" >> ~/.logs/zsh-history-$(date "+%Y-%m-%d").log; fi' }

Which certainly does write to the .logs directory in a file named the date, i.e. zsh-history-2020-10-27.log, however my timestamp and current directory formatting is not being leveraged from within the file, i.e.:

    9  ls -a
   10  vi .zshrc
   11  cd Dev
   12  ls

When the bash setup writes to the file like this:

2018-10-30.10:27:56 /Users/raysmets/dev/nexkey/nk-backend   201  30/10/18 10:27:56  git st
2018-10-30.10:27:59 /Users/raysmets/dev/nexkey/nk-backend   209  30/10/18 10:27:58  git log
2018-10-30.10:28:59 /Users/raysmets/dev/nexkey/nk-backend   202  30/10/18 10:28:59  git st

Furthermore while a dated file is created, the whole .zsh_history file is just being written and not incrementally the last command entered in the shell. What I mean is the shells logs from 10/28 contain all the logs from 10/27, which contains all the shell logs from 10/26... which is not ideal.

Curious if anyone more familiar with zsh & oh-my-zsh configs can help me? It would much appreciated! I love the flow of having timestamp shell logs written to calendar date files that I then use an aliased function to search over. In case anyone is interested here is the one I use in my bash setup:

    alias s='search'
    search() {
       ls -rt ~/.logs/*.log | xargs grep -rnw "$1"
    }

Also curious to hear about alternative zsh history setups that you would recommend and does a better jobs segmenting by date. Thank you!

My current work around is working ok, but still not ideal. I am using the native oh-my-zsh history functionality which has the time however it just dumping everything to a flat file and no current directory information.

alias s='search'
search() {
   omz_history -i | grep "$1"
}

Which outputs results similar to:

 2992  2020-11-13 15:56  terraform init
 3000  2020-11-13 16:03  cd .terraform.d
 3016  2020-11-13 16:24  mkdir terraform-modules

Answer 1

I am not certain what is the problem you are seeing.

In bash, a convenient structure to get a generic command working as prompt is (see also this)

function prompt_command {
  export PS1=$(~/bin/bash_prompt)
}
export PROMPT_COMMAND=prompt_command

and then write a script (in bash, perl, ruby, etc.), and place it in ~/bin/bash_prompt.

In zsh, you could use any of the options here. Perhaps your problem lays in the usage of quotes and double quotes.

Related:

1. https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/479592/zsh-consistent-history-between-machines
2. https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/432379/in-zsh-where-are-precmd-functions-defined